


maybe you find it stuck in your molars

by foundfamilyvevo, junghosucks



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Asexual Bobby | Trevor Wilson, Bisexual Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Demi Luke Patterson (Julie and the Phantoms), M/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Sunset Curve (Julie and The Phantoms), Trans Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29582814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundfamilyvevo/pseuds/foundfamilyvevo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/junghosucks/pseuds/junghosucks
Summary: It just seems strange to Luke. They've always been touchy, close friends, even if Bobby is more reserved than him or Reggie, or even Alex. Luke loves each of the boys like they're one of his limbs, can't imagine his life without them, can't imagine loving anyone more than he loves them.So the news that Bobby and Reggie are boyfriends comes as a bit of a shock.Or, Luke navigates some strange feelings about his bandmates dating.
Relationships: Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Luke Patterson, Bobby | Trevor Wilson/Reggie Peters
Comments: 25
Kudos: 88





	maybe you find it stuck in your molars

**Author's Note:**

> so many responsibilities are being neglected to bring this niche and obscure content to you, please enjoy. foundfamilyvevo acknowledges that her ratings are super inconsistent, this fic is rated t but mostly just for swearing. realistically you can read this as pre-canon or au, it's up to you!!
> 
> title from 'i think love is something that happens to other people' by michael gray bulla, which you can read here: https://graybulla.tumblr.com/post/187591113672/i-think-love-is-something-that-happens-to-other.

Luke has always known he and the boys are, well... close. He's not stupid. He knows he's a cuddly friend, and one of the reasons they get on so well is because the others don't really mind. Sometimes Bobby _pretends_ that he does, rolls his eyes and scoffs and shrugs them off, but Luke knows better. He also knows each of their dynamics is different and important, like how they can roughhouse with him, but not with Reggie, and how he and Reggie take teasing better than Alex does, even though Alex seems cocky with how much he dishes out. How Bobby can't handle being called on his bullshit if it's in front of someone else. Luke knows that if Alex wants comfort, he'll reach out to hold one of their hands. If it's Reggie, he'll just wriggle over to rest his head on one of their shoulders. If it's Bobby, he'll stare grumpily into the distance until one of them forces cuddles upon him, instead, and if it's Reggie, he'll tolerate them.

It just seems strange to Luke. They've always been affectionate friends, even if Bobby is more reserved than him or Reggie, or even Alex. Luke loves each of the boys like they're one of his limbs, can't imagine his life without them, can't imagine loving anyone more than he loves them.

So the news that Bobby and Reggie are boyfriends comes as a bit of a shock.

—

It's not a momentous occasion, not a huge announcement. Luke and Alex are at Bobby's for dinner after practice, and Reggie isn't well (fighting off a cold, Luke thinks he'd said) so he's already gone home when an acquaintance of Bobby's drops by to give back some books he borrowed, or something.

Luke isn't really paying attention to their conversation until Bobby's friend (Evan? Luke thinks his name is Evan) asks, "Hey, where's the boyfriend tonight?"

And Bobby replies easily, "He wasn't feeling great, took himself home early."

"Oh," Evan sighs, "shame, hope he feels better soon. Thanks for the books, bro. I think I really impressed her with the Foucault."

"No worries, Foucault's always a winner." Bobby grins, smooth, charming, his 'person he doesn't know so well' grin that he never really turns on the boys any more. "I'll walk you out?"

They're chatting so casually. Like Luke isn't sitting there slowly putting together the pieces, and having his world flipped over.

 _Boyfriend?_ Luke mouths at Alex, baffled. Alex raises an eyebrow and shrugs, as if to say, _yeah, so?_

"Did you know about this?" Luke demands, quietly still so Bobby won't hear him as he sees Evan off at the door.

"Know about what?" Alex answers. Luke has known Alex long enough, at least, to be able to tell for sure when Alex is messing with him, and he isn't right now. (He can't always tell with Bobby, still).

"The - the boyfriend. Is it _Reg?"_

Alex just exhales long and deep, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Oh my god, Luke."

—

So apparently everyone else knows. Which is fine. It's totally fine. It's not like it was a secret Luke has been deliberately left out of, he's just... stupid. Or blind. Or too used to their overly tactile, deeply involved friendships to recognise when something changes. Really, he thinks to himself, it's only fair that he didn't notice.

No one thought he was dating Reggie when he and Reggie kissed on New Year's Eve, and no one thought he was dating Bobby when Bobby started driving him to his specialists's appointments. Admittedly, tons of people thought he was dating Alex, but they had all been wrong, and mostly it had happened before either he or Alex had come out anyway, so it hardly counted.

Still. He tries to imagine Bobby buying Reggie flowers on Valentine's Day, or the two of them getting a milkshake and drinking it from the same straw, or Bobby trying too hard at an amusement park game to win Reggie some silly prize, and all of the mental images seem feasible, but they make him laugh. He could see Bobby and Reggie doing any of those things and not even bat an eye. He would never have thought they were dating.

Huh. Maybe that's why he didn't notice.

—

He gets a chance to talk to Bobby the next weekend, after their gig at the dodgy local bar they are definitely not old enough to have entered. About half an hour after Reggie yawns and knuckles his eyes and disappears into Bobby's room, and about fifteen minutes after Alex scoops his keys off the kitchen island and gives them both a quick hug before leaving to drive himself home, Luke is sat on the counter, sorting through a toolbox where each implement looks as foreign to him as the last.

"Wrench," Bobby asks, without removing his head from the cabinet under the sink. Apparently, there's something wrong with the pipe, and Bobby's parents won't be home for another couple of weeks, so he doesn't want to wait for them. To Luke, there are about four tools in this box that look like they could be a wrench. He takes his best guess and passes it down. Bobby doesn't thank him, doesn't even look up, just keeps working.

This is the Bobby that Luke knows. The one he loves well. The one who fucks up Luke's hair just as he's gotten it right, who will always pick him up no matter what time of night it is, who helped him administer his first testosterone shot when he chickened out on sticking a whole needle into his own thigh, who has never once lied to Luke about anything. It makes Luke feel so comfortable, knowing that if he's being annoying, or too loud, or whingy, or overdramatic, Bobby will never hesitate to tell him.

It's just hard to reconcile this Bobby with some other Bobby who's _Reggie's boyfriend_.

"So... uh," Luke says eloquently into the silence of the kitchen. "How long have you and Reggie been...?"

Bobby still doesn't look up. "Been what?" he asks after a moment, when it becomes clear that Luke isn't going to finish his sentence.

Momentarily, Luke flounders and to his own dismay, he can feel his cheeks start to burn. How does Bobby not know what he's asking? Isn't it obvious? "I just — last week at dinner? When Reg was sick? Evan said — I mean, just — he called Reggie your — boyfriend?"

Bobby snorts a laugh that makes Luke think maybe he knew exactly what Luke meant the whole time, and was just being an asshole about it. "Officially?" Bobby says. "Like six months. Since his birthday." Right. Luke remembers. The birthday they had had here, in this kitchen, with the cake Bobby had made from scratch. When Reggie had stayed over while Luke and Alex went home. "Unofficially?" Bobby continues. "Probably forever, I dunno, man. You only just realised?"

Luke kicks his feet and hums and wonders for the millionth time what obvious signals there were that he missed. Even Alex had noticed, and Luke and Reggie hung out together at Bobby's more than Alex did, especially since Luke had left home. "It's not like you were couple-y in front of us! Or more than we all are anyway. How was I meant to know?"

At that, Bobby does pause and look up at him, raising his eyebrows. "Seriously? I let him cuddle me _constantly_. You and Alex only get that on special occasions. And I don't tell him that the films he likes are shitty. And I bought him country tapes." He shrugs and rolls forward to the pipe again, wrench still firmly in hand like he knows how to use it, or something. "I don't get why it matters anyway."

"Sorry," Luke says, sheepish. Bobby just grunts, tugging at the wrench. Whatever he's trying to move seems like it's stuck there pretty tight. He looks competent, like this - tired, for sure, but more like a man than a boy, and Luke feels all sorts of strange admiration and love for him. How would he even know if he was in love with one of the boys? With Bobby, or Reggie, who he cuddles every day and who makes him laugh so hard he cries, or Alex, who glows in afternoon sunlight and can read Luke's mind without even trying. They're so intertwined in each other Luke sometimes doesn't know where he ends and they start.

"I thought we all loved each other the same amount," Luke says finally, before he can stop himself. He means it to be joking, but it comes off a bit plaintive, so he quickly adds, "I mean, how did you know it was different with Reggie?"

Bobby sits back on his haunches and takes a deep breath. He has dark rings under his eyes, accentuated by the overhead fluorescent lighting of the kitchen, and Luke suddenly feels guilty for pushing him. He knows how much Bobby hates being asked directly about anything personal, anything feelings, anything under the surface.

"It's not about 'amount'. That's not what's different. I mean," Bobby starts, and then stops. Then starts again, "Have you ever been kept awake by kissing me, or Reg, or even Alex? Or seen one of us and thought about how no matter what, we always look absolutely perfect? Like, so perfect you feel carsick, but in a nice way? Or like, has one of us done something small and normal and for some reason it made you feel like you were full of liquid sunshine?" His gaze drifts to the ceiling and he rests his chin on his arms. "Or you lie awake thinking about him when he's not even there. Or you look at him and all you can think about is how you want to marry him."

Luke gapes at him, dumbstruck. Realising what his own face is doing, Luke closes his mouth with an audible 'clack'. Then realises he should respond. "Mhmm," he says, like he now completely understands, and like he's not going into shock from hearing Bobby confirm that he has an internal experience of the world.

Bobby catches his eye and seems to snap out of it, going bright red, clearing his throat and immediately ducking back under the sink. "Or something," Bobby says, muffled and gruff, "I dunno."

Luke adores Reggie. He'd die for Reggie without a second thought. When he was picking out his real name, he chose Luke because of something Reggie loved. Yet, the idea that Bobby could feel so starstruck, so _romantic,_ about the same Reggie that Luke also knows, feels so foreign. In that moment, it's confirmed for Luke that whatever Bobby's feeling, it's not what Luke feels for him, or Reggie, or Alex, even though he can't imagine loving anyone else more than he loves them.

Luke sits, and Bobby twists something with that fucking wrench, and for a moment neither of them say anything. Then Bobby peers out of the cabinet and makes direct eye contact with Luke. "This never happened," he says, deadly serious, "and if you tell anyone it did, I will strangle you with your own guitar strings."

And Luke has enough sense of self-preservation to see that their moment has well and truly ended, and that Bobby is back to business as usual. "Understood, yes sir, I have already forgotten what you said," he replies immediately, hopping down from the counter, "Did we talk? Were we talking? Do you need some peace and quiet to finish that pipe? I'll give you some quiet. Goodnight, Bobby."

"G'night, Patterson," Bobby says, a little too dangerously, and Luke high-tails it to the couch in the garage and doesn't come back.

—

The next morning, when the sun through the big glass window at the back of the garage stirs Luke from his sleep, he makes his way back up to the kitchen. Seated at the kitchen island, Reggie has a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other, and he's reading aloud, voice still a little scratchy from the early morning. Bobby is standing over a frypan, but he's not paying any attention to the food in it. His eyes are on Reggie, listening intently, gaze so soft and a smile so sweet on his face that Luke recognises, for the first time, that he's intruding.

He feels a little strange in his stomach, at that recognition, but he doesn't think it's jealousy. He's happy for them. It's just adjustment. Knowing something he didn't know before.

" _Nebulous, distant, an invention of movies,_ " Reggie reads, and Bobby steps away from the frypan to gently tilt his chin up, to kiss him on the cheek.

Luke ducks back out the door and gives them ten more minutes before loudly traipsing in and demanding breakfast, and Reggie laughs delightedly and starts telling Luke about his weird dream, and Bobby tells Luke he's a gremlin from hell and will someone call Alex to make sure he's awake because otherwise he's going to miss pancakes, and everything is still good.

Luke's not in love with them like they're in love with each other, he thinks, but the love they have is just as much, just as good. He's happy here with them.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! comments and kudos are always appreciated. find us on tumblr @sunsetcurvecuddles and @sweetheartreggie.


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